I had another beneficial conversation with a trucker last week. It’s why I’m hyper active on social media. It’s a way to solicit this kind of helpful dialogue. This particular trucker is named John. I met him after he msg’d me in response to a post I made. John has worked on or around trucks his whole life.
John saw a comment I made and took it as an affront to truckers. That wasn’t my intention, but hindsight I can see how he took it that way. Below is the conversation we had. In the end John understood my position and I better appreciated his issues. He’s someone I’ll stay in tough with when I have a truck questions. Truckers are not the bad guys. The failure is a breakdown of good planning.
Let’s look at Lower Mac before we get back to John. Planners in the 80’s understood we were too far away from highways to be a viable hub for distribution warehouses. So at the time they zoned accordingly to setup growth boundaries. Regionally and locally officials envisioned a commercial tax base on the eastern portion of the township around the Hamilton Corridor. Therefore efforts were made to preserve the open space and farmland that made us so special on the western corridor. This made perfect sense.
The problem came when influential and wealthy speculative greenfield sprawl developers saw dollar signs. Through the years and after many legal battles our smart growth boundaries were erased. Good planning happened in the 80’s, but it was was circumvented by these landowners. These developers felt a sort of birthright manifest destiny that warehouses should expand into Lower Macungie. This despite geographically making no sense and regardless of the impacts on the community and coupled with the fact that in the end taxpayers always indirectly subsidize their kind of greenfield developments. Read More: Sprawls hidden subsidies.
Back to my conversation with John. Truckers are doing the best they can dealing with the same crummy circumstances we are. They use local 2 lane roads as shortcuts because their livelihood depends on it. It’s why they bleed onto Alburtis & Macungie’s Main Streets. (I write this as a truck literally shakes my office building on Main St.) Don’t blame the Truckers though.
So who to blame? Blame the land developers who circumvented good planning. Blame the public officials that allowed it. Blame the state for not giving regional planning teeth. Heck blame me for not fighting harder as a resident when we fought the Jaindl rezoning. But don’t blame the truckers. They are dealing. Same as us. We allowed the zoning that led to warehouses built miles and miles away from the nearest highway with no plans on how they would get in and out of our community.
So here is our conversation. (posted with his permission) Yes, “John” was pretty miffed at first. He felt I was putting the blame on truckers. Once he understood that I was being critical of the breakdown in planning and failures of gov’t officials we then agreed on the issue and found common ground. The fact remains that we’re all in this together. The truckers don’t want to be running our local roads as much as we don’t want them there. They prefer being on roads designed for trucks. So how to we protect them AND us? What are the solutions?
Aint Worried Bout Nothin: So tractor trailers belong only on highways? Every thing you own came by truck. Truckers use the roads to the deliver to stores. No trucker wants to take side streets unless 22 is shutdown because of a car accident or they are trying to get home. I hope someone parks a truck on your front lawn.
Commissioner Ron Beitler No, but I think highways are how they should get from A-B quickly when the road networks are planned efficiently and land development happens in the appropriate places. It’s a planning failure not an issue with truckers. Planners and officials failed the truckers and the residents. Good road networks and warehouses in the right locations benefit truckers by allowing them to do their job safer and more efficiently. You want to be able to get places quicker right? Isn’t that the idea?
Aint Worried Bout Nothin Your comment came to me as rude. We have to deal with people always telling us that we cant be somewhere or park somewhere when fed laws are mandating us to have to stop. And poor road designs and traffic congestions make us waste our 11 hours of driving time. It will benefit us to have a road like 78 betweeen allentown and bethlehem. I am sorry for coming across like I did. If you can help us get there guicker and safer theb i am behind
Commissioner Ron Beitler I apologize for not being clearer, my comments were critical of the planners and local gov’t officials that failed to have improvements in place before land development (warehouses) happen. I think that’s the case with Rt. 22 and the new fedex hub. I accept that we’re the storage closet of the NE and that alot of people get great jobs because of it, I just think we need better planning to handle it. Right now it just seems as though we’re shoehorning the valley with warehouses with little thought beyond the standard engineering homework. Problem is there is nothing standard about the type of traffic generated by warehouses.
Commissioner Ron Beitler Yes, it’s a nuisance (and dangerous) when a truck uses a 35mph local 2 lane road. But the issue is I’m sure the trucks would RATHER use the faster 6 lane highway going 55mph. But we failed to make sure that option was in place before the super boxes get built.
Aint Worried Bout Nothin I agree with you 100 percent. Warehouses build up and dont think about a 73 foot vehicle getting into them and unloading freight. Then the people on the side roads we have to go on all complain that we are there and dont understand we have to be on that road to deliver. That is exactly right. We prefer to be on the highway but like I said when we have to sit on 22 for 30 mins it cuts into our drive time so we try to find away around the traffic. We dont get paid when we are sittin not moving.
Aint Worried Bout Nothin The road widening is a great start. What about places for us to park at night when we have to be off for ten hours and the wawa on rt 100 and the trexler truckstop are completly full. And some recievers will refuse to let us on their property till our appt time. Is this somthing that you can address or can you put me in contact with someone I can address this too
Commissioner Ron Beitler Definitely something I think we can address. I’m forwarding this whole conversation to our planning commission Do you mind me using your name? Do you drive a truck for a living?
Aint Worried Bout Nothin No my name is john still my phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX if you would like to talk to me more thank you for hearing me out and again I apoligize for my earlier comments. Yes I do drive I was born and raised around trucks